Trenching at Gallipoli: The personal narrative of a Newfoundlander with the ill-fated Dardanelles expeditionGallishaw, John
History
Trenching at Gallipoli: The personal narrative of a Newfoundlander with the ill-fated Dardanelles expedition
Gallishaw, John
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Canadian
It must have been about the sixth week that I was in Egypt that one of
the Australians came over to my bed and told me that my name was on
the list of men to go to England by the next boat. I was allowed up
for two hours in the afternoon; and when I got up I looked at the
list, and found my name there. An orderly from the stores came in and
asked me for a list of clothing I needed. He came back in about an
hour with a complete uniform and kit. The sister told me that I was to
go to England the next morning. At ten o'clock the next day I was
taken out to the little clearing station in the square, and put in
with a lot of other men on stretchers. An officer came around and
inspected our kits. A little later a sergeant from the pay office gave
each man an advance of twelve shillings. After that the loading began.
A line of about twenty ambulances filed out of the yard and through
the malodorous byways of Alexandria to the waterfront. Here we were
put aboard the hospital ship _Rewa_, an old rocky tub that had been an
Indian troopship before the war. I learned this from an old English
regular in the stretcher next me. He had seen her often before, and
had made a trip from England to India in her once. The _Rewa_ was so
full of men that the latest arrivals had to go on deck in hammocks.
The thought of a trip across the Bay of Biscay as deck passenger on
the _Rewa_ was not very attractive, but our fears on this point were
soon allayed by one of the ship's officers. We were not going to
England on the _Rewa_, he said. We were going to Lemnos Island, and in
Mudros Bay we should transship into the _Aquitania_. When we had
cleared Alexandria Harbor, the wind had freshened considerably. All
that night and the next day we pitched and rolled heavily. The second
night, when we had expected to reach Mudros Bay, we were still
twenty-four hours away from it. Canvas sheets had to be rigged above
the bulwarks to prevent the spray from drenching the men in the
stretchers on deck. The next day a good many men were sea sick, and it
was not till the next evening that the storm abated. Even then it was
too rough to get close to the big ship. We did try to get near her
once, and succeeded in getting one hawser fast, but the wind and tide
drove us so hard against her, that the captain of the _Aquitania_
would take no more risks and ordered us off. We had to lay to all that
evening, and the next morning. At noon the wind died down enough to
begin the transshipment from the smaller ships. We waited while seven
other hospital ships transferred their human freight, and then moved
up near enough to put gangways between the two boats. The change was
effected very expeditiously. We were soon transferred, and settled in
our new quarters. I was in a ward with some Australian troops on the
top deck. Board petitions had been run up from it to the promenade
deck, making a long bright, well ventilated corridor. There was only
one drawback on the _Aquitania_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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